Technology: 'Gene gun' aims at Parkinson's

Prospects for treating Parkinson's disease with gene therapy look brighter thanks to improved methods for introducing foreign genes into brain tissue. The techniques could eliminate the ethically fraught practice of transplanting healthy brain cells from aborted fetuses into the brains of people with Parkinson's disease.

The transplanted fetal cells manufacture dopamine, a vital brain-signalling chemical that people with Parkinson's disease lose the ability to make and, as a result, lose their coordination. The new methods could make it possible to insert genes that manufacture dopamine into brain tissue taken directly from the patient, circumventing the need for fetal tissue.

Ning-Sun Yang of Agracetus, a biotechnology company in Middleton, Wisconsin, worked with collaborators from the University of Wisconsin at Madison to evaluate several techniques for inserting foreign genetic material into the brain tissue of rats. They successfully transplanted a number of genes, including one which makes tyrosine hydroxylase, a substance from ...

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